


March rain

by Augurey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birthday, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Childhood Memories, Family, Family Drama, Flash Fic, Gen, In Character, Melancholy, One Shot, POV Albus Dumbledore, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augurey/pseuds/Augurey
Summary: On Ariana's birthday Albus Dumbledore is brooding about the past and overlooks something ...
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Ariana Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore & Severus Snape
Kudos: 8





	March rain

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Märzregen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174170) by [Augurey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augurey/pseuds/Augurey). 



The eleventh of March was not a day to celebrate.

This cool weather kept the castle under a cover of fog. Mist fell on the old panes of the arched windows, through which the view fell on a cloudy sky. And from this gray-blue sea poured drizzle in soft drops to the earth. 'Like tears', Albus Dumbledore thought heavily and took a step back. On his lips a soft sigh that swallowed the crackle of the fire.He had felt he had been sitting in front the windows of the principal's office for hours; had felt the cold on the other side, penetrating the windows in defiance of the fire; had forgotten that his limbs had stiffened and a wet film in his eyes had increasingly taken his sight, while he simply looked up into the clouds and waited. Waiting to catch that one bright ray of sunshine, that one warm light that would do justice to the occasion. 

But the eleventh of March was not a day for celebration.

It hadn't been that day for almost a hundred years. No one sat at a laid table to blow out the candles on the cake; no glitter was in otherwise so quiet eyes; no soft girl's voice breathed a surprised "oh" over a mountain of gifts. The sky remained silently gray and only the rain-soaked castle courtyard shimmered a little in the pale daylight.

For a moment it seemed as if Albus Dumbledore had released the old memories from the cloudy rain haze. It was as if the wind carried her laughter to him like a distant echo; as if her eyes were gazing down on him from the few shreds of blue horizon that the clouds still left here and there; as if her blond strands, as pale and translucent as ghostly hair, blew in the veils of rain. For a moment, he lingered in memory, then Albus Dumbledore smiled bitterly. The fourteen-year-old girl he had in mind, she would be an old woman today, one hundred and four to the day. Wrinkles would wrinkle her face when she smiled and asked for a piece of cake. Grey hair would fall over her old pink silk dress. The color that Kendra once wore to every feast day.

But the eleventh of March was not a day for celebration. 

Albus Dumbledore felt the heart in his chest heavy like a stone as the memory was scattered in the rain. A cold shiver ran down his neck. Even the socks that a child's hand had once knitted for his father - made of soft wool, chunky and full of holes - did not warm his feet that day. There was no dinner table and no cake, no serenade and no aged birthday girl. His sister, who was supposed to open presents today, had been lying deep in the belly of the earth for ninety years, surrounded by wood that had long since rotted, in a cold grave. And it was his fault. It was all his fault! His blindness, his lust for power, his arrogance. His mistake that could never be forgiven. The nemesis of hubris that haunted him into his dreams.

Taking a deep breath, Albus Dumbledore turned his gaze back to the window and felt a moist stream finally run down his cheeks. Down in the courtyard, some students returned from the Quidditch field soaked through and hastily sought shelter under the canopy. For a moment his thoughts drifted away to Minerva, who had come up some time ago to discuss the last play dates of the house teams. She had noticed his gloomy disgruntlement, had seen the tears in his eyes, had asked what was bothering him. But he had sent her away. What else could he have said to her? That he, who stood up here by the window from which one could see the whole school, did not even see what was happening under his nose back in his days of youth? That he, the figurehead who had led the Order of the Phoenix through the storm of war, had himself once fallen into the maelstrom of dark plans for world domination? That the headmaster of this venerable school, in whose hands lay the fate of so many young people, failed to protect the one life that was entrusted to him more deeply than any other? 

No!

His burden meant solitude, meant silence. For his guilt there was no comfort, no forgiveness, not even understanding. For who among the battlements of this castle knew what it meant to bear such a burden? Who knew the eternally agonizing remorse in the face of the fact of having cruelly betrayed the dearest person in the world? That wound that never healed?

Albus Dumbledore received the answer quickly and unexpectedly. Lost in thought, he had hardly noticed the raptor's knocking at the door. It had escaped his notice that someone had pronounced the password and entered the room. But when he turned around to finally chase away his dull thoughts and bring the wreath of flowers to Godric's Hollow, he realized that he was no longer alone. Outside the door stood a man who looked at his tear-soaked face in bewilderment. And in his eyes Albus Dumbledore suddenly recognized the truth of a commonality that melted his loneliness. 

It was Severus Snape.


End file.
